Since 2014 I’ve been doing a year in review (you can check out 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020). I always love the opportunity to reflect and to get to revisit all of the monthly posts from the year. This year Joe and I were on the move quite a bit and made our first major purchase together as a married couple. I had an incredible year career-wise and am excited for what 2022 has to offer! But first, let’s take a look back at the highlights.
Career
I have to start with career because this was my best year yet! As you know, I’m passionate about sales and have been on a journey of improving my craft. Sales is certainly a stressful job because each day you are very clearly measuring your success: did you or did you not sell something? I’ve gained confidence and developed a better mindset to help me look at the immense opportunities to help companies and to improve as a professional.
This year I took a data science course from Harvard that was challenging and highly engaging. I also got to embrace being part of Google (going back to the office for a few weeks…before omicron came to get us all) and presented to students at my alma mater about the experience of working at Google. Some highlights were getting promoted and over exceeding quota.
Moving out of NYC, going to FL, and coming back
It’s fair to say that we were all going a bit stir crazy this year. Joe and I had been in our tiny 1 bedroom apartment for 2 years and when our lease was up in the summer we had to get out of there. Instead of finding a new place in the city right away, we decided to invest in a Tesla and drive to FL. We wanted to experience something new and have more space (and I have wanted a Tesla since first driving one in 2015!).
It was a great experience to live somewhere different together and I had a lot of fun trying out new activities, like aerial silks and trapeze. We quickly realized that a few months was enough for us and headed back to NJ to live with our parents for a few weeks while Joe found us a new apartment on the Upper West Side.
All of the NYC activities
We are city people through and through, and we got to enjoy everything this place has to offer (within reason with covid) this past year.
I went to the Met countless times, enjoyed a bunch of events at the NY Historical Society, spent time with friends at Central Park, went to Lincoln Center, and (the most NYC thing of all) got vaccinated in Times Square.
Family
We got to spend a lot of time with family this year! We made many visits to NJ, got to be with my parents in FL, and went to Busch Gardens with the Coris. I’m so grateful that we’ve learned how to live with covid better and could see everyone far more this year than last.
Joe and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary this year! I would have thought that we would have gone on our originally planned honeymoon by now, but that was not to be. Maybe we can do it in 2022, but who knows. We did get to visit Mohonk again to celebrate and it was wonderful!
The blog
2021 was a big year for the blog because I completely revamped the front end appearance and changed the backend. Since starting the blog I’d been using Google’s Blogger service. While I loved it, I realized that I wanted more control over the site to self-host.
I did the entire migration from Blogger to WordPress and set up self-hosting with Bluehost. I was nervous about doing everything on my own because I didn’t want to mess up and lose any of the work from the last 7 years, and thought the tech might be beyond me. But guess what? It wasn’t! I was able to use tutorials and YouTube and the nice support people who I purchased my theme from to figure it all out. Things are never as hard as we make them out to be in our minds 😂
It was tons of fun to come up with a color concept (my site was always just black and white because ~minimalism~) and shoot new photos with Austen. I’ve also enjoyed taking all the photos for each post instead of using stock images. I love this site and getting to be creative. Thank you for following along and stopping by!
What was your favorite memory from 2021? What are you most looking forward to in 2022?
Leave a Reply